Hi there guys, I run a website and have been thinking about making a template (niche related) and offer it for free, the template would have a link to my site in the footer which would have to be kept there. This way when people use it on their site it will have a link in the footer of the template linking to my site. This would gain me loads of backlinks, is this ok for my sites SERP's & SEO? Thanks HydroJohn
Yes, that;s a good idea... but you must have rules about template usage or else your link might get posted on bad sites..
John I have done this couple of times for my site http://nbridges.com/blog/ and though I have seen some traffic from theme directories, I can safely say it won't do wonders to backlinks. I had ofcourse not coded the footer links as I don't believe in it and had just put a request to keep the backlink, I guess people didn't kept the footer too. Anyway from my experience, don't put high hopes on theme/template distribution. A Better idea will be to host a theme directory or a set of themes (say 12) to people link to your theme directory/page.
I will try it as it cant do any harm, but I will just make sure people have to keep the link in the footer! I was just making sure it couldnt do any harm.
The link cannot do any harm to you if it is just an incoming link. For instance if my competition wanted to hurt me with google who says they don't go and spam my link in link farms and adult sites. It is all about what links your website links out to or exchanges with showing that you support that website and feel like linking to it. The best thing you can do with the templates is to encrypt your footer link. This may make some mad but in the long run will have more people linking to your website because most people (i am guilty too) delete the footer link as one of the first things in editing a template.
Sure it's a good idea to get backlinks to your site, I'm doing the same thing. Many people just removed the footer after they downloaded the template to their computer.
i see some using this link building method with success. if you consider this method, then you need to do a lot of templates. one or 2 will not do you much good. also, most people end up removing the footer link so consider encrypting the footer and use a seperate footer file with SSI or PHP include which will make it harder for most people to remove the footer links
definitely worth a shot. Often times webmasters will remove the link but some will keep it. You can get sitewide links when those using your template leave it in the footer! Choose your hyperlink text wisely!